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Topic: I ain't got a clue.... (Read 1422 times)

This year has been a bad year for me. I started with 20 hives but have lost 6 hives so far. These 6 hives all absconded. We are in a drought and first thought they left because of a lack of food. I checked a hive just now and it had SHB in it. I had put some pollen patties on this one particular hive about 2 weeks ago. All the patty was gone except about 2". In that small piece was SHB larvae. I checked my frames and found SHB on almost every frame. I've never had SHB before. Will the SHB cause my hive to abscond? What should I do? I thought about buying some checkmite+.

I recently combined a weak hive with a strong nuc. I was dismayed to find that after a week the SHB were owning the place. There was no pollen patty involved. The SHB were thriving in the drawn comb that was light on bees.

Right or Wrong I removed the drawn comb that the bees were not covering, packing the hive down to just a couple of boxes. Each frame left in the hive is either honey, loaded with nectar and bees, or brood/eggs. I am hoping this will allow the bees to dominate all the frames in the hive, keeping the SHB population in control. I also find the beetle blaster traps work very well. This hive now has two of them.

The removed frame were left a ways away for the bees to rob out. They took all the honey and nectar, but left the pollen in the frames. Apparently pollen is not a precious as honey!

Today the hive is very active with lots of pollen coming in. I will check inside in a few more days to see how well this is working.

I do what BrentX does when I have a wax moth problem. Remove all frames except those that the bees can cover. I then stick in a couple plastic foundation frames for the bees to build on once they start making more wax. It gives the bees something to do when they’re ready, the pests can’t eat it, and the queen will lay in cells that are barely combed up. When the bee numbers are high enough to protect more comb, I put back in the original combed up frames.

Thank the good Lord I don’t have SHB to contend with, but I have plenty of wax moths to deal with.